Trump's private club is ground zero for a disruption-themed second term: Inside Mar-a-Lago

PALM BEACH, Florida ? The gilded Tea Room at Mar-a-Lago, with its glistening chandelier and gold accent drapes, proved a fruitful venue for investor James Fishback to launch an investment fund aimed at taking down diversity, equity and inclusion policies at top American companies.

That's not simply because President-elect Donald Trump's private club, where a one-time membership fee now tops $1 million, abounds with deep-pocketed potential investors. Rather, the club is where the like-minded within the MAGA movement have hunkered down to plan the next Trump administration since his stunning election win.

"We're free thinkers here," Fishback, 29, said as he presided over more than two hours speeches and panel discussions.

Those conversations spitballed the use of data analytics to teach middle schoolers critical thinking skills, a monetary system where Bitcoin is more valuable than gold, using artificial intelligence to handle health insurance claims, and even marveled at a purported 25% spike in Bible sales.

There's a lot of disruption-themed brainstorming going on at the president-elect's South Florida club these days. Mar-a-Lago ? the Mediterranean-style estate that an American cereal heiress first envisioned as a presidential retreat a half-century ago? is today the giddy center of the American political universe.

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As Fishback wrapped up his Dec. 5 investment event, a human trafficking prevention luncheon was kicking off. The night before, Trump and his incoming administration's highest-profile hires ? including Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and Robert Kennedy Jr. ? held court in the club's ornate dining hall.

"In addition to all the other things that Mar-a-Lago is, it is a very important institution as a hub for this very Trumpian coalition that I think is going to be what conservatism looks like for the next generation or more," said Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Trump's first administration ushered metamorphosis for Mar-a-Lago

That transition to conservative hub has been almost a decade in the making.

When she passed away in 1973, philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post deeded her lake-to-ocean socialite mecca in Palm Beach to the U.S. government so it might live on as a tropical Camp David for American presidents. Instead, the decaying compound was sold to Manhattan real estate tycoon Trump in 1985.

Trump refashioned the property into a happening club in staid Palm Beach. Author Les Standiford said there was not much nightlife on the island at the time.

"Mar-a-Lago was a far more raucous and happening place than the Everglades Club or Palm Beach Country club," said Standiford, who wrote Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago and Rise of America's Xanadu. "In large part because Trump made it a point of encouraging entertainers and celebrities to join the ranks. That was part of his marketing strategy. That's what makes other people want to be there."

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Among those who appeared at Mar-a-Lago were actor Sylvester Stallone (who compared Trump with George Washington), performer Rod Stewart and various Miss Universe winners and contestants.

Another club staple were the Palm Beach winter season philanthropic galas, which contributed mightily to the club's reported $25.1 million in revenue in 2017. Organizations that held elegant charity balls included the International Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

For 20 years, that was Trump's Mar-a-Lago brand ? grande dame of the Palm Beach social season.

Trump's first presidential election win in 2016 ushered a change. Power players muscled in, buying memberships for proximity to the president, White House staff and Cabinet heads.

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"After the presidency came, people who wanted access to power of course were drawn to Mar-a-Lago, which added another layer to its appeal," said Standiford.

When Trump's first term ended with his 2020 defeat and he began to plot a comeback, the political overtone overshadowed polite society, Standiford noted.

"That's just a natural focal point given where Donald Trump's energies went following the [2020] election," Standiford said. "It probably will remain that way for as long as he is in office. It's going to be a political staging area far more than it ever was before."

Mar-a-Lago galas for 'bigger than life' Trump

A crucible for the Trump family and Mar-a-Lago was the white supremacist march and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The fallout led more than two dozen charitable organizations to boycott Mar-a-Lago, though several ultimately returned.

Club revenues saw a 14% drop through 2019. But by then politics was flooding the zone.

Toni Holt Kramer, who became a Mar-a-Lago member around 2009, was among the first to fill the void in the booking calendar, and the coffers at Trump's club.

"It was kind of a most unpleasant time," recalled Holt Kramer, who had a long career as a Hollywood TV show host. "You would have thought people would have stayed with Mar-a-Lago, and stayed with President Trump, but a number of organizations left at that time."

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In January 2018, Holt Kramer's Trumpettes fan club held what she and others can rightfully claim was the first large-scale, politically-infused gala at Mar-a-Lago.

A second Trumpettes event followed in 2019 with Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight. In 2020, Trump and first lady Melania Trump attended the group's football-themed party along with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the state's first lady, Casey DeSantis.

Early this year, the Trumpettes' "Mega-MAGA" bash stood out in the Mar-a-Lago season's event roster that also included a gala headlined by Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

Trump attended the Feb. 12 Trumpettes' party with Melania, in her first public appearance after the passing of her mother in January, along with U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Ramaswamy was there, too.

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So was Tom Homan, the former New York cop and immigration official tapped as Trump's border czar, and Club for Growth leader David McIntosh. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia attended a VIP cocktail hour in the club's White and Gold ballroom, while a Cuban salsa band serenaded a cocktail gathering by the pool.

Other political groups have hosted events at Mar-a-Lago, including the American Freedom Tour's "Winter Gala," Mike Flynn's America's Future Inc. and Catholics for Catholics, which brought actor Jim Caviezel. Among the most recent was last month's America First Policy Institute affair.

But Holt Kramer said the Trumpettes' galas stand apart for one reason. "I don't do a party. I do an extravaganza," she quipped. "That's the difference. We are bigger than life because he is bigger than life."

Amid the glitz, serious business continues. Trump recently hosted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the president-elect threatened to hit Canada with tarrifs.

Watchdogs worry Mar-a-Lago offers 'unfettered' access to Trump

The night before he held the breakfast event for his Azoria fund, Fishback was at Mar-a-Lago. He approached the incoming White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, as well as Trump himself to explain what his anti-woke fund was all about.

"I said, 'What you are doing for the country is you're going to run it like a meritocracy. You're going to hire the best and brightest even if they come from circles outside the traditional conservative world. We hope to do the same with Azoria,'" Fishback said of his chat with the president-elect. "And he wished me luck."

Perhaps no more than a benign exchange of good will, but encounters such as this one have government watchdogs again unsettled about the nexus of money, power and policy at Trump's Palm Beach club.

"We saw this happen before at Mar-a-Lago," said Jordan Libowitz, vice president of communications at Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington. "It is a place where you get unfettered access to him."

One high-profile example during Trump's first term, he said, was the influence that three club members — Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter, physician Bruce Moskowitz and attorney Marc Sherman — exerted at the highest-levels of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A Government Accountability Office investigation in 2020 found the three influenced decisions in five areas, including VA negotiations for a contract for an electronic health record system, implementation of a medical device registry summit and activities on veterans' suicide prevention and mental health awareness.

Early in the first Trump administration, CREW obtained records for a presidential visit to Palm Beach, a February 2017 golf and policy outing with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

That weekend was notable for a dining room national security confab between Trump, Abe and their aides in plain sight of club members and onlookers after a surprise North Korean missile test.

The lack of openness is worrying, Libowitz said, because the crowd hanging around Trump at the club influences government decisions, whether it's Musk sitting in on calls with world leaders and others jockeying for administration jobs or whispering in his ear about policy.

Libowitz noted there are other paths into Trump's concentric circles, including by investing in his social media company or crypto-currency enterprise.

But a seemingly sure-fire way is to spend money at his club, Libowitz said, whether through a membership or holding an event there. A report by CREW in July found $1.8 million in expenditures by political party organizations, PACs and candidates at Trump properties ahead of the November election.

"More than anything else, having a gala at Mar-a-Lago gives you an opportunity to really be seen as spending money at the president's business," Libowitz said. "If you want to get on his radar, on his family's radar, throw a big event. He's going to notice. He's going to know how much you spent."

A Trump transition spokesman didn't reply to questions about Libowitz's claim that spending money at Mar-a-Lago provided access to the president-elect.

Libowitz said it would not be a surprise to see revenues at Mar-a-Lago spiral in the next four years for another reason.

During his first term, much of the politically-minded spending on Trump properties was focused on his Washington, D.C. hotel. But that property on Pennsylvania Avenue was sold in 2022.

"Now that has shifted south ? to Mar-a-Lago," said Libowitz.

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Inside Mar-a-Lago: The 'hub' for Trump's coalition of disrupters